An uptick in mobile web usage by iOS devices, matched by an even greater decline in Android web traffic since November, is calling into question figures from IDC that reported an apparent, significant slippage by Apple in global tablet market share.

As noted in a report by Philip Elmer-Dewitt of Fortune, web statistics by Net Applications indicate that iOS users have actually increased their web presence over the winter quarter, alongside the release of the new iPhone 5 and iPad mini.

In contrast, Android's collective representation on the web has declined significantly by 13 percent since hitting a peak of 28 percent of mobile web traffic in November; for January, the figure is now at 24.5 percent. In contrast, Apple's iOS represents more than 60 percent of mobile web traffic.

The fact that iOS is more than twice as popular on the web as all Android devices combined calls into question market statistics by research firms such as IDC, which recently stated that Apple's share of the tablet market had fallen to 43.6% of worldwide tablet sales. That report was presented by Adrian Covert of CNNMoney to state that "Android is the new king of tablet market share."

Reconciling minority sales with majority usage

Given that web browsing is a primary function of mobile devices, how it is that Android, repeatedly reported by its fans to have an edge in both sales and installed base of users and devices, is showing up with just 40 percent of global mobile web usage of iOS?

One explanation is that IDC isn't really tracking tablet sales. It's compiling estimated shipments of devices into the channel. Outside of Apple, few tablet vendors are reporting their actual sales or even their overall shipments. Neither Amazon nor Samsung, for example, report their quarterly tablet shipments or sales. IDC makes some educated guesses. But the real issue isn't the accuracy of IDC's estimations; it's the legitimacy of conflating shipments with sales.

The real issue isn't the accuracy of IDC's estimations; it's the legitimacy of conflating shipments with sales.For Apple, iPad shipments were the same as its sales in the winter quarter. The company reported that it "began and ended the quarter with about 3.4 million iPads in channel inventory." Those devices in inventory aren't counted as a sale; they are sitting on Apple's retail partners' shelves and warehouses. Constrained supplies of iPads in the quarter mean that if Apple could have produced more, it likely could have sold more, too.

For other companies, however, shipments do not equal sales. If a company ships more inventory than it actually sells, it exits the quarter with a net gain of channel inventory. This does not contribute to product sales or usage. It is, however, counted by IDC in its "shipment" numbers and figures into the firm's calculations of tablet market size and each vendor's market share, even though unsold inventory does not expand the true size of the market.

This winter, Microsoft reportedly shipped 1.25 million Surface RT units into the channel, according to IHS iSuppli. Sales out of the channel "were significantly lower, maybe on the order of 55 to 60 percent of that figure," Rhoda Alexander of IHS toldCNET. That comes out to real sales of "roughly 680,000 and 750,000." On top of that, Alexander noted that "return rates were high."

The way IDC reports market share by "shipments," Microsoft would have earned almost twice as much credit for each sale compared to each iPad Apple sells. Additionally, Apple's "share of the market" is also reduced by excessive stock of products that aren't selling and therefore don't represent "the market" at all.

As a side note, IDC actually estimated that Microsoft shipped "just under 900,000" Surface RT tablets in the quarter, or about three quarters as much as iSuppli estimated. If iSuppli's sell through rates are correct, that would mean Microsoft may actually have sold fewer than 500,000 units in the quarter, even before considering return rates. So there's a vast discrepancy between reported shipments and what is actually selling and being used by consumers.

There's a vast discrepancy between reported shipments and what is actually selling and being used by consumersReporting market share by inventory shipments into the channel is wildly misleading, particularly because the only point of reporting "market share" is to determine what company's products are the most popular. Counting market share by shipments is like predicting the results of an election by counting the number of ballots that were printed rather than the number of votes that were cast.

Samsung similarly created a big ripple in tablet market share at the end of 2010 when it dumped millions of Android 2.2 tablets into the channel, very few of which were actually sold (as was later revealed in confidential sales reports in the Apple v. Samsung trial). Despite this, it was reported at the time to have taken significant "market share" from Apple, "gains" that were similarly not reflected in web usage (or app sales) because they were not real.

Apple's inventory channel is bigger than any Android tablet competitor

To illustrate how deceptive IDC's shipment-based market share numbers are, consider that Apple's iPad sales are now so vast the the global channel inventory levels Apple must now maintain is larger than the sales of any Android competitor.

Every quarter, the company notes that it seeks to maintain 4-6 weeks of channel inventory for each hardware product it sells. If Apple can't make enough of a particular device to both meet demand and stock the shelves of its channel partners with inventory, channel numbers come in low, as occured in the past quarter for both iPads and Macs.

In the most recent winter quarter, Apple reported selling 22.9 million iPads, amounting to 1.7 million iPads per week, up from 1.1 million per week in last year's winter quarter. Maintaining 4-6 weeks of inventory would mean the iPad maker would liked to have entered 2013 with 6.8 million to 10.2 million iPads shipped, unsold, siting on its retailer's shelves for purchase.

However, iPads sold so quickly that Apple's global inventory was left rather bare. There was plenty of room for another nearly 7 million more iPads in the channel before Apple's relatively conservative inventory maintenance levels would be considered full. (Apple once maintained as much as ten weeks of inventory for its Macs, something that actually contributed to inefficient operational problems).

According to IDC's own numbers, the shelves of Apple's channel partners at the beginning of 2013 had enough room to comfortably accommodate as many tablets as IDC said Samsung shipped in the entire winter quarter. It's an inventory deficit as big as all the tablets shipped by Amazon and Barnes & Noble combined, or more than twice as large as ASUS' record tablet shipments.

The shelves of Apple's channel partners at the beginning of 2013 had enough room to comfortably accommodate as many tablets as IDC said Samsung shipped in the entire winter quarter.If Apple had pumped out 7 million additional iPads, IDC would have counted that unsold inventory as "market share," even if none of it had actually sold, the same way the firm counts every other unsold shipment on the Android side. That alone would have been enough to give Apple majority market share in "shipments," according to IDC methodology, but all that extra inventory wouldn't have made any difference on the number of actual iPads in use.

Conversely, if IDC only counted true sales of tablets to end users in calculating market share, it would have an even bigger change to its reported numbers that would favor Apple even more. It would have resulted in numbers far closer to the actual real world figures evident in web statistics and app sales, which clearly indicate that iOS is being put to work more by its end users.

It's been a long standing practice of companies like Samescum to report shipment numbers, but fudge the sales figures. There's a warehouse somewhere filled with product, in order to distort the market in an attempt to hijack the competitive edge from its rivals. As they do with high subsidies, just to undermine the opposition product. Someone needs to call them out on this, and sanctions must be applied, as its akin to insider trading. Who in their right mind would support a company that thinks so evil, it'll do anything to crush its opponents. You only have to read this to get an insight into that evil mind.

One problem here--- Apple does count and report shipments to channel partners as "sales." That's standard accounting practice as the risk has transferred from the vendor to the reseller. Apple counts those as sales, because they are in fact, sales, to the reseller. Apple gives the change in channel inventory on its calls, so taking the units sales reported and subtracting net change in channel inventory gives the actual units sold to end-users or "sell-through."

The difference with Samsung is they stuff the channel then use discounting or buy back unsold units. Apple keeps shipments roughly inline with sell-through.

FYI. Maybe the Android users are buying 3 phones per person. One to use, one to use in case the first one's battery dies, and the 3rd one is the one they keep around because the first two have Sudden Death Syndrome and they to have a working product just as backup. And as far as tablets are concerned, they don't actually USE the Android tablet, they just leave it around so they can say they actually own a tablet and then they can praise how they level their XYZ Android tablet, but they don't actually use it. It's just for show.

That would be my rationale as to how to explain the reasons why Android sells more, but Apple has higher internet usage.

One problem here--- Apple does count and report shipments to channel partners as "sales." That's standard accounting practice as the risk has transferred from the vendor to the reseller. Apple counts those as sales, because they are in fact, sales, to the reseller. Apple gives the change in channel inventory on its calls, so taking the units sales reported and subtracting net change in channel inventory gives the actual units sold to end-users or "sell-through."

The difference with Samsung is they stuff the channel then use discounting or buy back unsold units. Apple keeps shipments roughly inline with sell-through.

Regardless of how Apple and Samsung differ in reporting "units sold/shipped," I believe the article is stating IDC estimates market share based on how many shipments they see leaving assembly factories and component manufacturing facilities. They can use Apple's numbers at face value because those are the actual numbers. They can't use Samsung's or Amazon's or B&N's numbers because those companies don't release the number of tablets or the number of Android smartphones sold/shipped, basically no such numbers exist outside of those companies' financial firewalls except as part of a general revenue number for that line of business.

When a company stops chasing profit and start chasing the betterment of their products, services, workforce, and customers, that will be the most valuable company in the world.

This could simply indicate that iOS users surf the web more than users of other platforms. For example, up to now I doubt Blackberry was a decent device to surf the web.?

I have a friend who bought his entire family <$100 Android tablets for Christmas.

They were struggling, badly, just to get the app store working as they'd expected (it was the manufacturer's and therefore much more limited) and getting WiFi networking operational.

I tried them. The touch screen was awful. Responsiveness was abysmal. If I had owned one of them I would have tossed it in a drawer and bought an iPad. But since he bought one for each family member that was an option he could not afford :(. Since many people think of the tablets as rough equivalents to iPads, I'm sure this spoiled a lot of Christmases for people.

There was probably more of a spike of iPad ownership in Christmas 2012 than 2011 thanks to the entry-level iPad Mini, thus the change in market share numbers whether derived indirectly from web use or not. I think a lot of crummy Android tablets were sold, and gained respectable market share. Since the target audience is likely to throw them into a drawer after the initial novelty wears out, I don't think they are any threat to Apple.

That would be my rationale as to how to explain the reasons why Android sells more, but Apple has higher internet usage.

Couldn't another possibility be that the iPhone users are just using the web more? There will be a lot of people that purchase their smartphone and only use it as a normal phone, just like there are lots of people that purchase laptops and never move them off the table they sit on.

There was probably more of a spike of iPad ownership in Christmas 2012 than 2011 thanks to the entry-level iPad Mini, thus the change in market share numbers whether derived indirectly from web use or not. I think a lot of crummy Android tablets were sold, and gained respectable market share. Since the target audience is likely to throw them into a drawer after the initial novelty wears out, I don't think they are any threat to Apple.

If they are cheap crap without Google Play, then they aren't counted as an Android activation.

Couldn't another possibility be that the iPhone users are just using the web more? There will be a lot of people that purchase their smartphone and only use it as a normal phone, just like there are lots of people that purchase laptops and never move them off the table they sit on.

This is confirmed by my experience. Latest exemple: A friend just told me her Mom loves her GS3.

I have a GS3 and an iPhone. GS3 *sucks*. However, it seems her mom uses the GS3 to phone, SMS, check FB... and sometimes mail. End of usage.

iPhone users are spoilt in that it works so well, you do more with it.

Social Capitalist, dreamer and wise enough to know I'm never going to grow up anyway... so not trying anymore.

I have a friend who bought his entire family <$100 Android tablets for Christmas....

Girlfriend's father bought a pile of Galaxy Tabs for the family for Christmas. Some of the grandkids had Samsung phones already and kept them. GF gave it an honest try for a week, then picked up an iPad mini and said in three minutes, "This is so much better." Hands on experience was no comparison. The Galaxy got returned for a mini. I'd bet she wasn't alone this winter.

This is confirmed by my experience. Latest exemple: A friend just told me her Mom loves her GS3.

I have a GS3 and an iPhone. GS3 *sucks*. However, it seems her mom uses the GS3 to phone, SMS, check FB... and sometimes mail. End of usage.

iPhone users are spoilt in that it works so well, you do more with it.

This is a variation of the excuse I heard from Windows users before the they switched to Mac. Except for the Win PC gamers that now seem to be a dying breed the main excuse against buying a Mac was that they don't do that much with a PC so the initial upfront cost of Mac wasn't warranted.

The funny this is once you get a machine that can do a lot more you tend to use it more. With a Mac over a $500 WinPC it's not so much about the performance but the ease-of-use that that allows so much more than what you get with Windows pre-installed on a cheap PC.

Even more funny is the common rebuttal by the anti-Apple crowd that the crapware can be uninstalled to speed up the system and you can find free apps that sorta do what Apple includes on their systems, etc. They don't realize how all of that is the reason why the WinPC is just a chore for the average user. You shouldn't have to do all that and at least with a Mac you don't have to.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Couldn't another possibility be that the iPhone users are just using the web more? There will be a lot of people that purchase their smartphone and only use it as a normal phone, just like there are lots of people that purchase laptops and never move them off the table they sit on.

Or maybe they're out living life, having fun, and knocking up broads, who the hell knows?

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example" Mark Twain"Just because something is deemed the law doesn't make it just" - SolipsismX

This could simply indicate that iOS users surf the web more than users of other platforms. For example, up to now I doubt Blackberry was a decent device to surf the web.?

I think this is a big part of it. Not so much that iOS users surf more so much as that people surf alot more on a tablet than on a phone. If you look at the post that started the 'mobile shopping dominated by iOS' on this site it uses data from IBM research. If you look at that data and compare phones Apple had 8.7%, Android had 5.5%. Still a pretty big win for Apple given the market share distribution of phones IMO, but within margins of error still pretty close to each other.

Prior to the release of the Nexus Android tablet sales stunk. The iPad was without doubt king of tablets and IMO largely still is. Since they had 90% market share in tablets AND since more people shop/browse on their tablet than phone, when you look at (iPhone + iPad) sales vs (Android phone + Android tablet) sales the number really gets skewed. Since most of the Android tablets/Nexus devices actually sold in November were likely given as Christmas gifts, they wouldn't show any web usage in November/December.

There will likely be some lag as the Android tablets proliferate. I'm not sure how the web data is tracked. If it relies on the device most Android tablets also have the 'identify me as a desktop' option that pretty much everyone uses. Does Apple not have this option? Visit one site your used to and have it show up as an annoying 'mobile' version of the site and that option is checked quickly. Even my nieces had that option set within minutes.

The real meaningful data will be seeing the same raw data from IBM 6 months or a year from now.

Or it's just that iOS users surf the web from their devices more than Android users?

Pretty weak angle, AI.

To some extent, I can understand the assertion that "iOS users surf the web from their devices more than Android users":

Many Android phones are feature phones not smartphones conducive to web surfing

Many Android phones are purchased off contract, BOGO or because of price -- likely the user has minimal or no data plan

What I don't understand is Android Tablet devices not showing web usage commensurate with their purported market share...

IMO, one of the primary uses of any Tablet is to surf the web (along with books, games, social apps, productivity apps). If Android Tablets are not being used to surf the web -- isn't it likely that they are not being bought... or being bought and not being used.

If the latter is the case, those tablet owners are potential iPad buyers.

Edited by Dick Applebaum - 2/1/13 at 4:02pm

"Swift generally gets you to the right way much quicker." - auxio -

"The perfect [birth]day -- A little playtime, a good poop, and a long nap." - Tomato Greeting Cards -

An uptick in mobile web usage by iOS devices, matched by an even greater decline in Android web traffic since November, is calling into question figures from IDC that reported an apparent, significant slippage by Apple in global tablet market share.

That's all we need - more good news about Apple to drive the share price lower. /s

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

The real issue isn't the accuracy of IDC's estimations; it's the legitimacy of conflating shipments with sales.

I disagree. That is a valid argument only in cases where the system is not at equilibrium - such as the start up of a new product. For example, their argument about Surface may hold some weight since it's brand new. Similarly, the earliest reports of HP Touchpad shipments were clearly misleading since so many of them were not actually sold until HP dropped the price.

However, for Android tablets, I don't think that's the case. While new models get released all the time, they are replacing existing models. If the old models were piling up in warehouses, there would be massive fire sales which we just don't see. Furthermore, people have been using the same argument for years. If Android tablet sales were that much below shipments all those years, even the densest of companies would eventually slow down production.

I think it's simply that the estimates provided by companies like IDC are far off the mark. When Samsung released sales figures for their products, they were far below what the market research companies have estimated, yet there's been no obvious change in methodology or reporting of the data since then, so they are probably using the same methods. There's absolutely no verification of the accuracy of third party numbers and no way to know if their grossly overestimated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Dennis

I have a friend who bought his entire family <$100 Android tablets for Christmas.

They were struggling, badly, just to get the app store working as they'd expected (it was the manufacturer's and therefore much more limited) and getting WiFi networking operational.

I tried them. The touch screen was awful. Responsiveness was abysmal. If I had owned one of them I would have tossed it in a drawer and bought an iPad. But since he bought one for each family member that was an option he could not afford . Since many people think of the tablets as rough equivalents to iPads, I'm sure this spoiled a lot of Christmases for people.

I got one of those cheap Android tablets as a prize in a contest and played with it for a couple of hours before it was just too frustrating so I sold it on eBay. Yet the reviews for this tablet were pretty decent--I guess some people have very low standards.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13

I suspect we are also seeing that junk gets used less. People talk. People who bought iPads this Christmas will (IMHO) be happier than those who bought most Android tablets. As the year rolls on, they will think of correcting their error.

I had to edit that 3x to get it all that one might think I'd started using beer money. This was from a recent change in Safari where I turned on Correct Spelling Automatically. I have just turned it off so now you should only get my usual misspelled words that typically don't spell other words, which is oddly better than correctly spelled that alter the meaning of the sentence. Now I know it's my fault for not proofreading my comments and I take full blame but I would really like spell checking to evolve to understand the intention of the writer. I hope someone is working on that.

This bot has been removed from circulation due to a malfunctioning morality chip.

Couldn't another possibility be that the iPhone users are just using the web more? There will be a lot of people that purchase their smartphone and only use it as a normal phone, just like there are lots of people that purchase laptops and never move them off the table they sit on.

If that's the case, which it probably is, then developers can't rely on shipment "market share" to see whether to develop for a platform or not. Another reason why Android isn't "winning".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cash907

Or it's just that iOS users surf the web from their devices more than Android users?

Pretty weak angle, AI.

Isn't Android suppose to be for techies because it's "open" and you can modify it at will?

This is a serious problem with IDC group. They should know the numbers can be very different between shipped and sold. Then they conveniently mix Apple's sales number with a very uncertain shipped number causing Apple investors great amount of loss.

I call into question Android's numbers also. As a matter of fact, I've been calling into question those bogus numbers for years now. Why should anybody just believe in estimates that somebody decides to whip up? There's a reason why official Android numbers are rarely revealed by certain companies.

Note that when they break out phones and tablets separately, the cellular web usage is the same for both OSes. There is no such thing as some kind of Android feature phone gap or poor buyers or other such nonsense.

Only tablet over WiFi usage seems to vary, and apparently only in the USA. Why? I think it's because...

THE ANDROID "TABLETS" BEING COUNTED INCLUDE MILLIONS OF E-READERS

The device numbers include millions of Android base e-Readers which are mainly used to read books and view videos. They are not used that much for web browsing. For example, webstat sources show that Kindle Fires account for less than 1% of mobile web browsing.

MOST OF THE ANDROID E-READERS ARE USED IN THE USA

In addition, surveys show that quite a few American tablet owners have both an Android based e-Reader and an iPad. Guess which is used for browsing?

STAT COUNTER NUMBERS SHOW THERE IS NO WEB GAP OUTSIDE THE USA.

On the contrary, it shows what we expect: more Android usage. Below: USA, then the World. Link here.

THE ARTICLES THAT CLAIM SOME KIND OF DISCREPANCY USE WEB STATS

WHICH ARE ARTIFICIALLY WEIGHTED BY COUNTRY

The charts above are from StatCounter. The chart used in the article is from Net App.

StatCounter does not weight their data. Net App weights their data by country, using numbers we don't know.

StatCounter uses 3 million websites. Net App only looks at their own group of 40,000 websites.

StatCounter counts page hits. Net App only counts unique visitors, which does not indicate the amount of web usage.

The upshot is, it seems pretty obvious that the discrepancy in web stats is because of:

Everything Samsucks does is a lie. Their phones and tablets they claim were inspired by nature is a lie. The trumped up Samsung Experience stores are a lie, Their TV commercials are a lie, even their CEO Gee Sung Choi outright lies to his customers and the press. And now we have IDC on the payroll and they're lying for Samshit.

Hey Gee Sung, can't you compete against Apple without lying like Iran? Is the the best you can do?

I have a friend who bought his entire family <$100 Android tablets for Christmas.

They were struggling, badly, just to get the app store working as they'd expected (it was the manufacturer's and therefore much more limited) and getting WiFi networking operational.

I tried them. The touch screen was awful. Responsiveness was abysmal. If I had owned one of them I would have tossed it in a drawer and bought an iPad. But since he bought one for each family member that was an option he could not afford . Since many people think of the tablets as rough equivalents to iPads, I'm sure this spoiled a lot of Christmases for people.

There was probably more of a spike of iPad ownership in Christmas 2012 than 2011 thanks to the entry-level iPad Mini, thus the change in market share numbers whether derived indirectly from web use or not. I think a lot of crummy Android tablets were sold, and gained respectable market share. Since the target audience is likely to throw them into a drawer after the initial novelty wears out, I don't think they are any threat to Apple.

D

Exactly! I lost my IPhone last weekend (left it in a taxi in China - ugh! - 6 month old 4S, US version) and not wanting a Chinese version (Chinese mandatory wifi standard is used, not global standard version) I had a friend pick up a new 5 from Hong Kong (also 17% less expensive due to high tax in China, none in Hong Kong). Meanwhile I had to have a phone during the few days I waited for my new one, so picked up the cheapest Android phone I could find at the local computer mall to find out what all the noise is about Android first hand - it is a $150 USD Ares brand phone running android V 2.3.6, the OS version which currently makes up 47% of all android phones. (The newest version is 4.1 and.2 with only 10% share). The phone is a total POS - impossible to type on, buggy, clunky, the standard browser is a total POS, downoaded Firefox and it crashes all the time, google's own browser, chrome, can't run on it (go figure), the screen is low res, etc. etc. etc. this is not a device that is usable to any meaningful extent on the web like an iOS device. The world is loaded with 100's of millions of these less expensive low end android phones that are barely usable. It is grossly misleading to even look at Android collectively as some unified OS or platform. What a frustrating experience! Now how to sell it to some unsuspecting fool with a clear conscience...